Apple's iPhone is back to driving the growth of smartphones in the US, according to a recent Nielsen study. In a survey of recent cell phone acquirers, the proportion of new iPhone owners has jumped to 17 percent from 10 percent at the beginning of the year, while percentages of new Android phone owners has plateaued at 27 percent.

Those numbers show that Android still makes up the majority of new smartphone sales for customers who picked them up in the last three months, but interest in the platform has stopped growing for now. But Apple has managed to fight back: interest in iPhones has risen anew since January when iPhones sales had tapered off, while Android phones were climbing. The introduction of the Verizon iPhone likely had something to do with this swapping of roles, as analysts predicted shortly after its introduction.

BlackBerry is still going downhill, and fell from 11 percent of new sales to 6 percent in the last few months. Windows phones are hovering at one percent, apparently little more than a blip on consumer radar.

But all the brands together have made big strides for smartphone adoption as a whole: 55 percent of recent cell phone acquirers chose smartphones over feature phones, up from 34 percent a year ago.